Latino Daily News

Publishing Company Awards Novel of Mexican Author Daniel Krauze

The novel “Dias de Lava” (Days of Lava) by Mexican writer Daniel Krauze was honored in the inaugural edition of the Nuevas Letras Prize, awarded by the Planeta publishing corporation and the Sanborns Group, and includes a cash prize of 1 million pesos (about $78,000).

“‘Dias de Lava’ is the winning novel in the first year of the Letras Nuevas (New Writing) Prize, written by a very young Mexican talent,” the organizing committee said on its Web page.

It also congratulated Daniel Krauze, son of the writer Enrique Krauze, “for winning the Nuevas Letras Prize for the Novel, and to Gerardo Gutierrez for the honorary mention he obtained.”

The prizewinning novel tells the story of a Mexican called Matias, who after the death of his father returns to his own country after living abroad for six years, only to come face to face with what made him leave in the first place.

Matias finally goes through a painful process of readaptation in which “he has to deal with his own past of destroying the lives of all those he left and all those who loved him,” a review of the work says.

Krauze’s published works include the volumes of poetry “Cuenta Regresiva” (Countdown) in 1992 and “Llama” (Call) in 2008, and the novels “Otros Tiempos” (Other Times) in 1999 and “Duelo de Noche” (Night Sorrow) in 2006.

The Letras Nuevas Prize was awarded at the Soumaya Museum in Carso Plaza, and the jury was made up of Angeles Mastretta, Marisol Schulz, Francisco Martin Moreno, Fernando Solana and Gabriel Sandoval.

The Sanborns and Planeta groups see the new prize as “an important step in the promotion and acknowledgment of Mexican writers and their peerless storytelling quality.”

The winning work will be published by the Joaquin Mortiz firm and will be presented at this year’s Guadalajara International Book Fair.